Dragon Gunfire's Promotional Trial: Trial of Intelligence
Aether sat on a tree stump. He saw the different people who had passed coming. He saw three pairs, along with Miriam, Walter, and Odin. "Congratulations," said Aether, "you made it to the second round of the trial." "Walter," said Odin, "You managed to defeat your opponents. Good job!" "Thank you," said Walter, "it was all thanks to your training." Theia and Seraph walked up to Aether, supporting an injured Matthew between them. They set Matthew down slowly next to Aether, making sure not to open up his wound, as Matthew makes a huge sigh in his seat next to the master. "Master Aether, it seems that Seraph and I were a bit rough on Matty here... Can I call you Matty?" Theia says and turns to their wounded opponent. "Anyways, I was hoping you had some way to heal him? I don't want his wound to get infected. He is my new friend after all!" She finishes with a bright smile And her hands lightly capping together. "Mother," called Aether. "Have you memorized any healing spells?" "I've seen Chase do a few, so I should be able to give it a try." Miriam put her hands on his chest and a blue glow appeared around her hands. Matthew's wounds began to disappear. He leaped back onto his feet, and began stretching. "Thanks guys," said Matthew. "Now I should be getting back to the ship we came here on. Everyone that lost is supposed to go back home. I hope I get to see you two soon." Matthew waved goodbye to Seraph and Theia as he walked back into the forest. Sykushi and Kyshira appeared next, with bandages on one of their arms. It appeared to be treated battle damage they had sustained in their fight against their proctor. "Ah, you guys passed too? Good job you guys!" Kyshira ran up ahead on Sykushi to the gathering group. "I can heal you two as well if you'd like," said Miriam, smiling at Sykushi and Kyshira. Sykushi spoke "No thank you, the injury we sustained are pretty light compared to what I imagine we could have sustained if we got careless against our proctor." Kyshira also joined in "A little nick never hurt nobody. I treated the wounds so it won't get infected. We'll be fine." Kyshira then jumped onto Sykushi's shoulder. "So glad you guys made it too! I can't wait to see what the next trial brings; I am sure everyone will do great!" Theia exclaims. "Hey Miriam, would you mind healing some of my wounds? It would be nice to be refreshed for the next part of the trial." Chase, William, and Malory arrive next, all appearing to be in fairly good condition. Chase walks slightly ahead of the group, stopping in front of Aether with a mildly displeased look on his face. The fight was hardly what he'd expected, and he probably hadn't made it out of Malory's Lunacy spell had William not been there. "Master Aether, William and I were able to defeat our opponent. I still have a great deal of energy left if any assistance is needed with healing our guildmates." He says, and then he steps off to the side, carefully evaluating the condition of his guildmates. He can't help but feel a twinge of guilt, as they all have varying wounds while he'd suffered none at all. It's not as though he wanted to be hurt, but it just feels like he didn't give the same amount of effort as everyone else did. Aether put his hand on Chase's shoulder. "Don't feel guilty about this. You're lack of injury only shows how skilled you are. Tend to the wounded, it might make you feel better." "Chase! You made it too!" Theia says, hugging him tightly. "Well I will take you up on your offer, mind patching me up a bit?" "Not at all," Chase says, and he makes a vague motion that indicates that Theia should turn around. After she does, he places his hand on her back, right between her shoulder blades where her heart beats steadily against his palm. His hand glows with a bright green light, and Theia's wounds begin to close up, even bruises fading away. Any fatigue she previously felt is completely wiped away as well, her energy rising as a result. "Better?" He asks, retracting his hand. "Much better!" Theia says as she stretches her hands over her head. "I wish I could repay you Chase, that felt awesome. And all my burns are healed now!" "It appears as though Oliver, Akira, Marekō, Nekomata, Vant, and Jacob will not be joining us," said William. "But considering who they were up against I'm not entirely surprised." "Yes, everyone that passed has been gathered," said Aether, "Which means I can begin explaining the rules of the next section of the trial." Aether walked in front of everyone and snapped his fingers. A rune appeared on all of the participants of the trial. "I placed a trap that activated when each of you entered your paths in the last round. You've all been marked. You're next assignment is simple, remove the rune I've placed on you. Simply rewriting it won't count, it must be completely removed. You have five minutes. If you fail to remove the rune in the time allotted, you fail this portion of the trial and must return home. Your time begins now." William ignited his hand with the Flame of Rebuke. He touched it to his mark, and began burning it away. Seraph munched on an steel sword as he sat and complained about the second stage. This is just plain lame! How many times have we done this? How many times, Aether? This a lot about muscle memory than actual intelligence he thought to himself as he finished his meal. "Time to get to work!" he announced with a spark in his eyes, one that has never been seen before. He took out a small metallic cylinder and pressed a small white button on it as he placed it between his lips and switched to stop watch mode on his watch. Let's do this! he continued inside his head while applying the trial and error method in order to find the correct frequency of the magic as he repeatedly struck it with his own magic power which was isolated to his finger and every time had a different frequency. By the looks of it, I am almost there. That begs the question, why is everyone struggling... he thought but suddenly his thought process was interrupted by a sharp pain in his limb. "G-oh iee!" he tried to say while the cylindrical device in his mouth. "Resonance, definitely--resonance. That was like the meanest pinch, ever!" he complains removing the cylinder as he checks the frequency of the magic. "Good thing that I brought this, heh! Not to rewrite the runes!" he announced once again with a smile as he rewrote the runes after finding their frequency, since not knowing the magical frequency of the runes could have been troublesome and he wouldn't be able to interact with them, let alone rewrite them. He rewrote the runes in such a manner that it would collapse on itself and would slowly disintegrate into nothingness. Alright, two minutes until this goes ka-boom! Maybe, I should check on Theia and the others! Sykushi held his arm out as shadows enveloped the arm the mark was on, it seemed to start to eat at it. "Are we allowed to assist our teammate in removing the mark?" As Sykushi said this Kyshira seemed to study the mark intensely as her thoughts quickly focused to the mark as she channeled her Etherano on the mark slowing pushing it off her body. Theia looked over her body and saw that the mark had appeared on her right shoulder. She evaluates the mark and its effects on the flow of her magical energy. She begins to exert her magic in the opposite frequency of the magic seal. Thinking that she should think outside the box, she decided to be simple and walks up to Aether. Not breaking focus on the exertion of magical energy into the seal, she says "Master Aether, I know this may not be the method you were hoping for, but would you mind removing the rune from my body? I figure I would give it a try and just ask." She giggles. "Yo! You done yet?" asked Seraph, walking towards Theia with his arm glowing. He took out a small book and began reading something and then looked back at Theia. "Just read that 4,153,237 people got married last year, not to cause any trouble but shouldn't that be an even number?" "Hey give me some time to focus!" Theia said while trying to come up with ideas. "And maybe some of the people got second wives and all that...I don't know" "When this is over, you want to go somewhere? It's not even afternoon, eh. What say? Let's wrap this up by afternoon, I'll make reservations" Seraph replied with a giggle. "Oh and Theia, there's a saying you know, lm yakun alnnas tajlub jawwabana min alghadab" he added as he slowly walked away, helping her in a way nobody else could. "Sure we can go somewhere after the trials! That would be fun! And you know I don't understand what you're saying...but, uh, thanks..." Theia says and then gets back to focusing on the rune removal. "As much as I admire your camaraderie," began Aether, "for this trial you are on your own. You cannot rollover or give help, as I said before. You must overcome this obstacle with your own intelligence." "It was worth a shot, now what are the rules of this rune? I can't quite get the angle to read what it says on my arm?" Theia says and tries spinning around to glance at her shoulder. Chase identified that the rune was on his left hand, and glares at it as though it had committed a personal offense against him. He channels his magical energy into his hand, and the severe intensity causes hairline cracks to form all over the rune. His joints and muscles are placed under a great deal of pressure from harboring such an immense amount of Eternano in a small area although no wounds are made on the surface of his skin. It's fairly difficult to gauge how much pain Chase is in, mostly because his scowl of pain isn't all that different than his normal expression. From the way he's clenching his jaw, however, it's safe to say he's not enjoying this at all. Despite this, he keeps a steady watch on the rune, waiting and hoping for it to break before his time is up. "The rune says: 'This mark cannot be removed, except by one with enough knowledge to do so.' Basically, the only limit to removing it is what you can think up," said Aether. "Hmm well let's see then..." Theia ponders and she maintains focus on reversing the frequency of the rune on her arm based on its alterations to her magic flow. "Maybe if I get out of range of the caster, the rune will be void! Let's go, Light Wings!" Theia shouts with a smile, as golden light begins condensing into large wings on her back. She lifts of the ground with a strong push and begins increasing her altitude to the maximum her body can handle; hoping to get out of range of Master Cade's magic. Her altitude led her outiside of the island's protective barriers. Suddenly something flew by, blue and sword-like, clipping her wings, and she began to fall back down to earth. Kyshira looking up at Theia "Poor Theia getting her wings clipped so violently.... Oh gotta focus! Good luck Theia!" Kyshira looked back on the rune on her body as she continued using her magic to unsettle the foundation of the rune, if it came down to it she wouldn't be afraid of using more extreme methods to remove the rune from her body. Sykushi's shadows completely overtook the rune on his body as he used his shadows to flood the rune planning to overtake the runes and take it down. "That wasn't my magic," murmured Aether. He flew up and caught Theia, safely placing her on the ground. Sykushi looked as Aether took off "Huh... Miriam got any idea whats thats about?" He asked curious as to what happened, as this happened he looked at the rune as the shadows that had enveloped the mark had eaten away at the mark removing it from his body, Kyshira using her magic caused the skin around her mark to crack as she pushed the rune onto it but due to the nature of how she did this she did start to bleed. "There got the rune off my body." Kyshira grinned as she tossed the marked part of her body away. "Hmph, well I guess that didn't work...well I guess I should go back to my original plan and give it all I got!" Theia says with new found determination. She closes her eyes and focusing on the flow of her magical energy within her body. She notes the effects on her flow radiating from the rune on her shoulder, and begins exerting her magical energy in an inverse frequency of the jutsu shiki in a much greater quantity. With a giant release of magical energy, the rune on her shoulder begins to fade, until it all disappears from her skin. She peers on her shoulder and smiles brightly. "Yay! I did it!" She bounces up and down with excitement and begins cheering on the remaining participants. "You guys can do it! I believe in you all!" Seraph approached Aether as the runes on his hand began glowing and were not behaving in their own anomalous way. As they collapse on themselves and continued to dissipate, he looked at Aether. "Sup? Did others make it?" By the time he finished his sentence, he heard a sharp, high pitched sound and then looked at his arm. "Dinner's ready, eh?" he added chuckling as the runes disappeared completely. "Time is up!" called Aether. "It seems as though the best of the crop passed the first trial as well. You all pass the second stage. Follow me to the third stage of the trial." Aether led the competitors to another location. ---Meanwhile, floating outside the barrier on the island--- "Was it truly necessary for you to clip that young girl's wings," said a blonde man, that was literally glowing. "We've been up here for hours," responded a man with bright red hair and golden armor. "I needed to do something to spice things up." "Silence! Both of you!" Snapped a young man in black armor. "Jeez Jason," said the pink haired man, "no need to be so uptight." "Do not forget why you are here Julius Kaizar," said Jason. "We are here to kill Aether Cade, and any members of Dragon Gunfire in our way." Julius sighed. "Well Verve, he is techinically our boss. You don't have any troubles with this job, do you?" "I'm against killing yes," said Verve, "but that's why you're my partner Julius. That way, I don't have to."